"According to this alliance, France and Russia appoint themselves judges on their own affairs by independently determining the aggressor, if occasion arises without a resolution or a recommendation of the League of Nations, and thereby are able to go to war against Germany according to their own judgment.
"This strict obligation of the two countries is clearly and unequivocally evident from Paragraph 1 of the signatory protocol to the Treaty of Alliance. That means: In a given case France can decide, on her own judgment, whether Germany or Soviet Russia is the aggressor. She merely reserves the right not to be exposed, on account of military action based on such an individual decision, to sanctions on the part of the powers guaranteeing the Rhine Pact, namely, England and Italy.
"From the point of view of law and realistic politics, this reservation is meaningless.
"In terms of law: How will France be able to foresee, when determining the aggressor herself, what attitude the guarantors of the Locarno Pact will afterwards assume towards her one-sided definition? The answer to the question of whether France would have to fear sanctions in such a class depends in practice not only on the faithful adherence to the pact by the guarantors-about which the German Government do not wish to raise doubts in any way-but also on the most various prerequisites of a purely factual nature, the probability or improbability of which is not to be perceived in advance. In addition, however, the evaluation of the relationship between the new Treaty of Alliance and the Rhine Pact cannot be made dependent on the treaty relationship between France and Germany on the one hand and the Guaranteeing Powers on the other, but only on the.. direct treaty relationship between France and Germany themselves. Otherwise one would have to expect Germany to tolerate silently every possible violation of the Rhine Pact by France, in confidence that the guarantors would have to provide for her security. That certainly is not the intention of the Rhine Pact.
"In terms of realistic politics: When a country is attacked by such a superior-military coalition as a consequence of a decision, incorrect because taken in advance in one of the party's own interests, it is an empty consolation to obtain its right in subsequent sanctions against the aggressors condemned by the League of Nations Council. For what sanctions could actually hit such a gigantic coalition reaching from East Asia to the Channel? These two countries are such powerful and important members and especially militarily strong factors of the League of Nations that according to all practical considerations, sanctions would be unthinkable from the outset.
"Therefore this second reservation dealing with the consideration of probable sanctions is of no consequence at all from a realistic political point of view.
"I now ask the members of the Council to bear in mind not only the legal and practical political scope of this obligation of France's to act independently, but to ask yourselves above all whether the opinion can be advocated that the German Government of that time, which signed the Locarno Pact, would ever have taken upon themselves the obligations of this Pact, had it contained such one-sided stipulations as have now later developed." I now go to Page 26 of the document book, and the same document, and to clarify the German, point of view, I add the following. I quote:
"But the Franco-Soviet Russian alliance means, beyond thatin the German Government's view of history-a complete elimination of the hitherto existing European balance and consequently of the fundamental political and legal conditions under which the Locarno Pact was concluded at that time." With this, Germany had expressed the legal basis of her attitude toward the Locarno Pact and the Versailles stipulations regarding the demilitarization of the Rhineland. In order to prove her will to disarm, there is in the same document on Page 7, that is, Page 27 of the document book, an exhaustive and detailed disarmament proposal.
I ask the Tribunal to accept in evidence the document just cited, so that I may later refer to it.
With this exposition I conclude my presentation on Germany's reasons for reoccupying the ~hineland. Regarding the role of the Defendant Von Ribbentrop in the occupation of the Rhineland, I shall enter upon that when I call the Defendant to the witness stand After the occupation of the Rhineland, the Defendant Von Ribbentrop returned to London, where he was then ambassador. On 4 February 1938 he was appointed Foreign Minister, and from that time on, conducted the foreign policy along the lines laid down by Hitler. In proof of this statement I refer to Ribbentrop Exhibit Number 10, to be found in the document book. This is a very short document that I submit to the Tribunal for judicial notice. It is an excerpt from the speech of the Führer before the German Reichstag in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin on 19 July 1940.
I quote: "I cannot conclude this appraisal without finally thanking the man who for years has carried out my foreign political directions in loyal, tireless, self-sacrificing devotion.
"The name of Party member Von Ribbentrop will be linked for all time with the political rise of the German Nation as that of the Reich Foreign Minister." I submit this quotation to the Tribunal to show according to what principles the Defendant Von Ribbentrop had to conduct the foreign policy.
I should like now to ask the Tribunal to hear the witness State Secretary Von Steengracht.
[The witness Von Steengracht took the stand.]
THE PRESIDENT: Will you shte your name, please?
ADOLF FREIHERR STEENGRACHT VON MOYLAND (Witness): Adolf von Steengracht.
THE PRESIDENT: Will you repeat this oath after me: "I swear by God-the Almighty and Omniscient-that I ell speak the pure truth-and will withhold and add nothing." [The witness repeated the cath in German.]
THE PRESIDENT: You may sit down if you wish.
DR. HORN: What was your last position in the Foreign Office?
VON STEENGRACHT: From May 1943 I was State Secretary of the Foreign Office.
DR. HORN: What were your activities?
VON STEENGRACHT: In order to present my activities in a comprehensible way, I must make the following prefatory remarks: From the beginning of the war, the Foreign Minister .had his office in the neighborhood of Hitler's headquarters; that is to say in most instances several hundred kilometers distant from Berlin.
There he carried on business with a restricted staff. The Foreign Office in Berlin had duties of a routine and administrative nature.
But above all, its duty was also the execution of the regular intercourse with foreign diplomats.
Within the limits of this field of duties, I bore the responsibility, as State Secretary, from May 1943. The molding of foreign political opinion; the decisions and instructions in foreign policy, on the other hand, originated from headquarters, mostly without any participation, sometimes also without any subsequent information to the Foreign Office.
DR. HORN: Who determined the basic lises of the foreign policy?
VON STEENGRACHT: The foreign policy, not only on its badc Lines, but also usually down to the most minute details, was determined by Hitler himself. Ribbentrop frequently stated that the Führer needed no Foreign Minister, he simply wanted a foreign political secretary. Ribbentrop, in my opinion, would have been satisfied with such a position because then at least, backed by Hitler's authority, he could have eliminated partly the destructive and indirect foreign political influences and their sway on Hitler.
Perhaps he might then have had a chance of influencing Hitler's speeches, which the latter was accustomed to formulate without Ribbentrop, even in the foreign political field.
DR. HORN: Were there other offices or personalities, in addition, to the Foreign Office, that concerned themselves with foreign policy?
VON STEENGRACHT: Yes, there was practically no office in the Party or its organizations that, after 1933, had no foreign political ambitions. Every one of these offices had a sort of foreign bureau through which it took up connections with foreign